30 Days Hath September 2016 | Day 21 | Be the Sword: An Exhortation by Cait Johnson

September 21, 2016

Be the Sword: An Exhortation

Cait Johnson

You jeweled hilt

you bright reflecting blade

use your

keen

true

edge–

but not to wound or rend.

Be the sword of blessing,

sword a beacon;

shine light over this confused,

this tangled

human world.

Cut away the killing noise

empty words

reveal the soul’s essentials.

Make something.

Make it true and real and beautiful.

Polish the sword of yourself.

Make it shine.

Cait Johnson has authored six works of spiritual non-fiction, including Celebrating the Great Mother (co-authored with Maura D. Shaw), a handbook of earth-honoring creative projects and ritual celebrations for parents and children; Witch in the Kitchen, which restores a sense of the sacred to cooking and eating; and Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, a look at the common elemental roots of the great religious traditions. She writes poetry grounded in an appreciation of the sacredness in the everyday, feminist spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all things; her poem “Cold Moon” was included inMeasure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, from Random House. She is formerly faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Southern Maine, and is an Emeritus Fellow of the Black Earth Institute. She has trained with the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and is a shamanic practitioner with a private practice as an intuitive counselor in the Hudson Valley, where she writes, directs, and performs in shamanic theatre. Her latest book, The Road to Minsk, with artwork by Ania Aldrich, is just out from Baba Yaga Press.